Evil Within - mandatory 4GB vRAM requirement

[Pinstripe]

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

1.64% use 4GB VRAM cards (compared to a ~35% combined 1GB, and ~22% combined 2GB users).

Good luck trying to make money with that, Bethesda.

Good thing though idTech5 won't (hopefully) be used in future games. And isn't Tiled Resources meant to alleviate VRAM usage?

 

[Pinstripe]

I'm skeptical. It's either a really bad port or the person posting for Bethsoft is an idiot who thinks his "hard drive box" needs 4 gigamabits of that video stuff on the card RAM part.

Or perhaps publishers try to artificially drive new hardware sales by scare mongering. Wolfenstein for example ran well on much lower hardware.

 

[Carfax83]

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

1.64% use 4GB VRAM cards (compared to a ~35% combined 1GB, and ~22% combined 2GB users).

That steam survey can be misleading. The type of PC gamer that will likely be playing these kinds of big AAA games will have machines with beefier specs than the Steam survey average.

Good thing though idTech5 won't (hopefully) be used in future games. And isn't Tiled Resources meant to alleviate VRAM usage?

What version of OpenGL does idTech5 use? I believe OpenGL has something similar to tiled resources, but I don't know how efficient it is compared to the Direct3D version, which requires DX11.2.

But developers seem reluctant to use these features. I mean, are there even any DX11.2 games on the horizon? Not that I know of.

 

[Pinstripe]

That steam survey can be misleading. The type of PC gamer that will likely be playing these kinds of big AAA games will have machines with beefier specs than the Steam survey average.

What version of OpenGL does idTech5 use? I believe OpenGL has something similar to tiled resources, but I don't know how efficient it is compared to the Direct3D version, which requires DX11.2.

But developers seem reluctant to use these features. I mean, are there even any DX11.2 games on the horizon? Not that I know of.

If they had beefier specs why wouldn't it be catalogued in the survey?

idTech5 uses OGL 3.1, therefore no (hardware) Tiled Resources. idTech 6 will most likely use a DX11/12 engine.

Besides, I can hardly see a difference between Ultra and High/Medium details in most games nowadays. But then again I'm more a gamer and less a benchmarker.

 

[Pottuvoi]

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

1.64% use 4GB VRAM cards (compared to a ~35% combined 1GB, and ~22% combined 2GB users).

Good luck trying to make money with that, Bethesda.

Good thing though idTech5 won't (hopefully) be used in future games. And isn't Tiled Resources meant to alleviate VRAM usage?

Well, IDtech5 basically does the Tiled resources in 'software' although the texture size limitation is a lot bigger than in the hardware one. (PRT is worthwhile as it eases the use in every way.)
I have no idea why they would 'require' 4GB of vram.

Maybe they have different textures for console and PC. Maybe lower res textures on the console versions and much higher ones available for the PC version.

Megatextures use constant amount of memory independently from the resolution of the textures in 3d scene.
This means that whatever resolution the textures would be, it doesn't increase the amount memory used when rendering them.
(Everything is rendered from dynamically created texture atlas using indirection texture.)
If PC version has texture quality slider or similar it most likely specifies what the size of the temporal texture atlas is. (Bigger atlas reduces popping etc.)

Biggest limitation on how megatextures used in Idtech5 is the storage space for texture and bandwidth moving the data. (and dx/gl limitations)
It's also good to note that one could create the texturedata on fly, virtual texturing doesn't specify how the texturetiles are filled. (How Frostbite engine does the landscape texture.. (Battlefield 3&4 etc.))

 

[ShintaiDK]

Not sure why you are shocked.

We saw this coming with next gen consoles having ~6GB of available vram, which is a huge leap from the older consoles. Ofcourse any AAA dev worth his salt would take advantage of that and raise the bar in IQ.

Take an old game like Skyrim, it looks ugly by current standards, add in 4K texture mods and shader/lighting/shadow mods and it looks great. You can achieve a lot if you're given the resources to do so. In fact, it is terrible that AAA games don't do this, as in not having an "Ultra" setting.

If you have seen the videos of it. You would already know it doesnt raise the IQ bar at all. Rather the opposite way.

 

[PenguinJim]

If they had beefier specs why wouldn't it be catalogued in the survey?

They were, but they were diluted down to 1.64% due to all the entries from people who would never buy a game like this (and it only listed 4095MB, not 4096MB cards, too).

From 75 million active users that's still a potential market of ~1.2-1.3M people.

But I'm really just arguing the toss as I'm 100% certain it will not "require" 4GB of VRAM. ()

 

[ShintaiDK]

@Shintai
What does this mean

A 4GB Maxwell card for example is around equal to a 4.5-4.8GB Kepler card.

AMDs Tonga also radically improves there. SO while only 2GB, it offers more than previous 2GB cards.

 

[Carfax83]

If they had beefier specs why wouldn't it be catalogued in the survey?

It is catalogued. Like I said, the type of PC gamer that is likely to play these types of games are more like us, so they're not the "average."

The Steam hardware survey also collects data on MILLIONS of people, so even the relatively small percentages of people with more powerful hardware constitutes a very large amount of people..

idTech5 uses OGL 3.1, therefore no (hardware) Tiled Resources. idTech 6 will most likely use a DX11/12 engine.

Well that's pretty sad about idtech5 if true. OpenGL is practically dead in the water anyway for AAA games.

 

[ShintaiDK]

If it really uses 4GB VRAM, also on console. Then the game itself is really small in terms of system memory footprint. Since consoles only have around 5GB combined for both parts for the game.

 

[Pottuvoi]

A 4GB Maxwell card for example is around equal to a 4.5-4.8GB Kepler card.

AMDs Tonga also radically improves there. SO while only 2GB, it offers more than previous 2GB cards.

I'm quite sure that the delta color compression is for bandwidth reduction, not vram storage.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I'm quite sure that the delta color compression is for bandwidth reduction, not vram storage.

Since bandwidth usage depends on size. Then how you imagine that works?

 

[kasakka]

It's also worth mentioning that for example Wolfenstein: New Order also runs on idTech 5 and its "ultra" options are also really putting machines on their knees, especially with the way idTech 5 doesn't support SLI.

However, the ultra setting on that game is pretty much indistinguishable from one step below. There's a point where higher res, uncompressed textures just don't give you anything back except lower framerate and high VRAM use.

I don't know what the settings for "recommended" experience are but aiming at the small amount of players with 4GB of VRAM seems odd. Gameplay videos certainly don't look like it would require a lot especially since it depends on spot lighting a lot for atmosphere so much of the game area isn't even lit.

 

[Spanners]

Since bandwidth usage depends on size. Then how you imagine that works?

I was under the impression everything was still stored uncompressed, so the VRAM usage should be unchanged.

"...the GPU is able to significantly reduce the number of bytes that have to be fetched from memory per frame."

 

[Grooveriding]

6GB VRAM needed for ultra textures in Shadow of Mordor

 

[Carfax83]

I was under the impression everything was still stored uncompressed, so the VRAM usage should be unchanged.

"...the GPU is able to significantly reduce the number of bytes that have to be fetched from memory per frame."

As far as I know, textures are stored in compressed format, and don't become decompressed until they are ready to be used by the GPU on the fly.. The GPU has a very efficient decompression algorithms, so everything is done lightning fast..

Now whether Maxwell's new compression algorithm can help with reducing VRAM usage, that's another matter entirely. I must say that I've noticed Watch Dogs, a notorious VRAM hog seemingly using less VRAM with my GTX 970s than it did with my GTX 770s..

But I haven't done any real tests on that so I can't be 100% certain. That's just my impression.

 

[Spanners]

As far as I know, textures are stored in compressed format, and don't become decompressed until they are ready to be used by the GPU on the fly.. The GPU has a very efficient decompression algorithms, so everything is done lightning fast..

Now whether Maxwell's new compression algorithm can help with reducing VRAM usage, that's another matter entirely. I must say that I've noticed Watch Dogs, a notorious VRAM hog seemingly using less VRAM with my GTX 970s than it did with my GTX 770s..

But I haven't done any real tests on that so I can't be 100% certain. That's just my impression.

I just assumed the colour data was stored in uncompressed form in VRAM and only compressed "in transit" to save bandwidth. I'm not sure what percentage of VRAM usage is usually comprised of colour data but I'd have thought if significant VRAM usage gains had been made they would have been touted.

 

[VirtualLarry]

this. they're committing suicide if they require 4GB VRAM, that's like 1% of the entire market. Good luck with sales!

Same thing happened with Ultima Underworld. Required a 386 to play, not enough market for the game at the time, developer went bankrupt.

 

[Pottuvoi]

As far as I know, textures are stored in compressed format, and don't become decompressed until they are ready to be used by the GPU on the fly.. The GPU has a very efficient decompression algorithms, so everything is done lightning fast..

Yes, at least on nvidia GPUs texture stays compressed up-until L1 cache.
ftp://download.nvidia.com/developer/cuda/seminar/TDCI_DX10perf_DX11preview.pdf
http://fileadmin.cs.lth.se/cs/Personal/Michael_Doggett/pubs/doggett12-tc.pdf

If I remember correctly at least some AMD hardware stored uncompressed result to texture cache. (At least Xenos did, not sure about the latter GPUs.)

 

[toyota]

Since bandwidth usage depends on size. Then how you imagine that works?

since when does the amount of VRAM have anything to do with its bandwidth?

 

[realibrad]

It seems like the game is completely made for consoles. Both new systems have 8gigs of shared memory. They likely split it in half when making the game, and its why they recommend 4gigs for vram. They probably took a lot of coding shortcuts because the systems had so much headroom that they took the lazy way out.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Wow, I was considering a second 7970 or a GTX970. But, if this is the direction things are going I might just wait until next year, hopefully we'll have 20nm at some point. 6GB-8GB will probably be pretty standard, and needed. I hope the game's visuals are worth the hardware requirements. 50GB is a lot of space...

 

[SPBHM]

If it really uses 4GB VRAM, also on console. Then the game itself is really small in terms of system memory footprint. Since consoles only have around 5GB combined for both parts for the game.

nothing new, consoles are not running PC windows and are a lot more efficient, the old consoles also did impressive things with very little memory being used,

the fact that the consoles now have this huge amount of memory (8GB, if for now games can only use 5GB it means the rest is reserved and used for other OS tasks) means PCs will need to have a lot more for the full next gen ports

 

[ShintaiDK]

since when does the amount of VRAM have anything to do with its bandwidth?

Nobody claimed anything like that.

 

[SlowSpyder]

If it really uses 4GB VRAM, also on console. Then the game itself is really small in terms of system memory footprint. Since consoles only have around 5GB combined for both parts for the game.

But, the Xbox 360 has 512MB of shared memory (plus 10MB edram), the PS4 has 256MB system ram and 256MB vram. You probably wouldn't want to play ports from those old consoles on a PC with a total of 512MB split between system ram and vram. Likewise, the new consoles have 5GB available and 8GB total. So I wouldn't be surprised if, just as with the old consoles, you need a fair amount more ram and vram in your PC than is packed inside the new consoles.